


Ni Partayli (I Remember)

by Bigorneaux



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: (Din's Parents), Brief References to Past Drug Use/Unhealthy Coping, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Healing, M/M, Mandorin 'Verse, Married Relationship, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Supportive partner, War, character backstory, supportive friends, trauma responses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28204716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bigorneaux/pseuds/Bigorneaux
Summary: Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc. Ni partayli, gar darasuum.I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.On a small, Outer Rim planet, Din meets a ghost from his past.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Corin the Stormtrooper (Rescue and Regret) & Din Djarin, Corin the Stormtrooper (Rescue and Regret)/Din Djarin
Comments: 60
Kudos: 98





	1. Ni Su'cuyi - I’m Still Alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyIrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyIrina/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Time To Say Goodbye](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28136529) by [LadyIrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyIrina/pseuds/LadyIrina). 



> This story wiggled its way into my brain a few days ago and just will not leave me alone. So, despite the fact that I am nervous that this is a terrible concept, here we are. This story is set in LadyIrina’s Mandorin ‘verse AU, and was inspired by a particular scene in the first chapter of Time to Say Goodbye where Corin has a panic attack and Din recognizes it because he has experienced the same. This made me want to explore some of the traumas of Din’s past in more depth and this idea was born. Please heed the warnings in the tags, as this story does depict panic attacks, trauma response/PTSD, and references to past unhealthy coping, as well as some internalized shame/stigma. The character experiencing this is surrounded by supportive loved ones and healing will be a theme within the story as well. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think so far, but be gentle! I write for fun and to spend time with the characters I love, and none of this is beta’d. 😊❤

_Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc. Ni partayli, gar darasuum._  
 _I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.  
_ \- A Mandalorian Remembrance for the Dead 

Din has no idea what makes him turn down the alley of the bustling, thrumming market on Acaron-9. Later he’d think of it as a compulsion. Something he did brainlessly, without thinking. Something beyond conscious thought or control. 

Which means the kid was probably responsible. Surprise. 

So he turns. He pushes past vendors yelling as they hawk goods, past kids who dart in and out between stalls to race without regard for the bartering, bickering adults around them. Past clouds of heady incense and brightly coloured fruit stands. He doesn’t register them in his usual, sharp-eyed way. Instead they just seem to blur into wisping, shifting shapes of colour and sound. 

Once he’s in the alley, the sounds of the market muffle further and he pads quietly down the narrow passageway until he emerges onto an adjacent street. There are street vendors here, but also storefronts with large windows and intricate displays. It’s still the commercial district of the settlement, but there is a quieter, softer feel to it. The kid coos in his sling and Din looks down at his wide, sparkling eyes. 

The _ad’ika_ stretches out a little claw to the left and whines. Din feels it like a tug and just turns left and walks. In his mind, he’s simply exploring the market, killing time while Corin and Paz look for the parts they need to repair the two rickety starfighters Din had finagled out of a particularly dicey (and wildly successful) bounty run. The new Covert has a small, underground hangar bay and the ships, once operational, will be a boon for the Covert’s defenses.

Din’s lost in the idle hum of his thoughts about the Covert when the kid tumbles out of the sling. Din starts, caught sideways by surprise at his own inattentiveness and at the kid, who’s gotten a little taller and a little more agile in the past year or so and is toddling quickly into the middle of the street. 

Din yelps and beelines to the kid who’s just wobbled out of the way of a honking speeder. It would have passed over the top of his small frame, but Din’s heart slams up into his throat anyway. 

“Grogu! _Dank farrik_ , Grogu, what are you doing?” 

The damn womp rat just flails his stubby green arms happily and dodges out of Din’s way, darting between the legs of a woman who is staring at them like they are mad. She’s carrying a load of fancy-looking shopping bags and has clearly, Din thinks, never had to tend to a child in her life. She laughs derisively as Din skirts around her and while he knows he must look utterly ridiculous decked out in armour and weapons while chasing a tiny, adorable menace, Din still wants to stop and give her a piece of his mind. Wants to...but just says, “Excuse me, sorry, pardon me,” instead. 

He’s almost got the tiny demon child in his grasp when a trash can falls between them, upset onto its side out of thin air. Din wants to yell that that is not an acceptable use of the Force, but he just deftly jumps the garbage bin and bolts his hand out to fist into the back of Grogu’s tunic with a triumphant, “Ahah!” 

“Grogu, _mar’e_ , you can’t do that!” Din scolds as he picks up the burbling, cooing kid up and begins to straighten back up with a tired grunt. Grogu is smiling, looking straight into his t-visor. Little clawed hands grab either side of his helmet, and Din can’t help but melt into a laugh when the little bean bonks his wrinkly forehead against Din’s helmeted one. 

“Now what was that all about, _ad’ika_?” Din asks, gentler now. Grogu coos softly and his little smile fades. His eyes become big and serious, almost solemn. He extends a small arm over Din’s shoulder with a thoughtful little woo. 

Din spins around to face the storefront behind him and all the air slams out of his lungs. It’s a shopfront like any other. There’s a beautifully carved wooden door with large transparent panels recessed between two glass showcases filled with artfully hung textiles. Din can see a wooden counter with a customer at it through the mannequins and swirls of fabric. The front of the counter is embossed with a needle and thread. A tailor’s shop. There is nothing special about it.

Except that there is. The garments in the display are shades of red. Bright vermillions and deep burgundies. Fabric the colour of spilt wine with intricate scarlet inlays. Soft velvets and sure stitches. Little cherry beads sewn onto the cuffs of sleeves. This is the clothing of Aq Vetina. 

The unspoken name seems to sear his tongue and he wants to spit it out and run. Aq Vetina. His home. His home before the Covert, before everything changed. A home he thought he’d made his peace with and laid to rest. And yet here it is before him. 

The clothing is as delicate and beautiful as he remembered. It was one of the aspects that made their small outpost unique. The red dyes were made from rubruma, a grain endemic to the planet. It was a rich golden on the outside, but had dark red seeds beneath the husk that were used to make vibrant pigments. His neighbours had been tailors, a fairly common profession on the planet. Their family had spun and dyed cloth and designed garments to sell both to the inhabitants of Aq Vetina and to ship off-world. Their daughter, Sesena, had been Din’s closest friend as a child. She was quiet and small for her age, like Din, and she’d preferred to play make-believe by the river than get into scuffles with the rougher children in the neighbourhood. That had suited Din, who generally disliked unnecessary conflict, just fine. 

Din reaches out without thinking and places a gloved hand on the glass of the display window. He feels like if he stares long enough, the mannequins will shift into his parents and he will step through the glass and be a small boy again. A memory flits into his mind, unsought but vivid, of his and Sasena’s mothers walking them to the river. Of Sesena scrabbling onto a large rock and declaring she was a princess of Naboo. Of making a crown of white flowers to sit atop her dark, tumbling locks and declaring himself her noble guardian (he was not, he’d stated emphatically, at all interested in marrying her Royal Highness or being a prince). He thinks wildly for a moment that he can hear their mothers’ laughter behind him and spins away from the display to check, only to find a cart passing by on the road, wares jangling and tinkling. 

Din whirls back around and realizes that his mouth is dry, his heart racing. He’s mourned his parents over the course of his adult life and made his peace with what he’d lost. He’d spent many years filled with anger about what had been taken from him, but had gradually come to terms with it. He’d thought this chapter of his life closed, had never really thought about the fact that other Aq Vetinians had survived the Separatist attack, though that reality seems bizarrely obvious to him now and he can’t fathom why he never considered it. 

Grogu’s little clawed hand reaches up to touch his helmet and Din looks down to find that he is peering at his son through the glassiness of tears. He realizes that Grogu has led him here, knowing somehow that this out-of-the-way market held a small piece of his father. Din has no idea how to feel. The sight before him is devastating yet hopeful. He feels both irrationally angry at his son and profoundly grateful. 

He’s squeezing Grogu tight against him and working up the nerve to turn away and leave when the shop door opens, chiming brightly as the customer he’d seen through the glass steps out. The owner follows the patron out onto the first step, thanking them and chatting politely about an upcoming festival. Din looks up and his world narrows down to the sharp, gutting point of the woman’s face. 

It’s Sasena. 

Half of her face is mottled by old burn scars, but she is unmistakable. Intelligent green eyes in an apple-round face. She’s petite and fine-boned and appears about the same age as Din, laugh-lines crinkling at the corner of her unscarred eye. It's her.

It had never, ever occurred to Din that she might have survived. 

He’s staring at her dumbly through his t-visor when she locks his gaze and stills, seeming almost as startled to see him as he is to see her. Din thinks for one frantic second that she knows who he is before remembering that his helmet hides his face. 

He panics then, swivelling quickly away to cross the street to leave before any interaction can occur. 

He makes it a few steps before the question echoes out behind him. 

“Are you a Mandalorian?” 

He could ignore it. Could just keep walking and pretend like none of this had happened. But Grogu starts to whine and fuss in his arms, kicking a leg into the unarmoured side of Din’s ribs. Din manages to take one, two, three more steps and then loses his nerve and turns around. 

“Yes.” 

“I haven’t seen a Mandalorian in a long time.” 

“Yes.”

The woman— _Sasena_ , he thinks, in spite of himself—hesitates and Din realizes he hasn’t really responded in a way that makes sense. 

“Did you want to come inside?” she asks. 

“No.” 

“Oh.” 

A beat of silence passes between them. 

“I was a little girl the last time I saw one of your kind.” 

Din’s stomach knots. 

“I was a little boy.” 

Another beat of silence. _Well, this is just going great_ , Din thinks. If he jams his foot any further into his mouth, he’ll just choke and die and avoid all of this. 

He clears his throat. “I was a little boy when I saw—when I saw a Mandalorian for the first time.” 

“But you _are_ a Mandalorian?” she asks, puzzled. 

“Yes.” _But once I was a little boy and I put flowers in your hair by the river_. “Yes, but I was a foundling. The Mandalorians, they...they rescued me when I was very young. Raised me as their own.” 

“They rescued me, too,” she says, her voice soft and small. “My whole family. From Separatist droids.” She pauses. “Are you sure you won’t come in? Not to shop. I can make you some tea. A Mandalorian is always welcome at my hearth.” 

Din is done. Hot tears are stinging his eyes. He cannot do this. 

“I have to go,” he blurts. He doesn’t mean to be so abrupt, means to soften it with a “thank you,” or something, but his throat constricts and he just turns on his heel and stalks away, ignoring Grogu’s plaintiff whine. 

He comms Corin that he's heading back to the Razor Crest to wait for them and then practically runs there. He jams Grogu into the sleeping cubby and tells him, begs him to nap and then goes to the cockpit to hyperventilate his way through the flood of emotions he’s trying unsuccessfully to dam up. 

Ghosts of his past flicker behind his eyes, memories he’s tried his whole life to leave behind. Ridiculous things. Sandcastles built on the shore of a meandering river. His father kissing him goodbye and adjusting the straps of his satchel as he left for school each morning. Meeting friends on the way and quietly listening to them titter over the frivolous concerns of childhood: who’s parents had packed them cookies that day, which teacher was the most boring, the idle buzz of the playground politics that Din usually avoided, preferring to sit under a tree and study languages on his datapad instead. 

Each moment flows into his thoughts with sharp, cutting clarity, feeling less and less like memories and more like living, passing moments. He’s tugging impatiently on his mother’s scarlet dress as she chats brightly with Din’s teacher, then he’s playing with small plastoid figurines in Sasena’s large, sun-streaked living room. He’s padding with pajamaed feet down the hall, listening clandestinely to the hushed, anxious conversations of the adults in his parents’ kitchen as the galaxy shifts and changes and threatens the peace of even their tiny, out-of-the-way settlement. He’s snapping his head up with a start to the sound of explosions and listening, terrified, to the panting, shaking breath of his mother as she holds him and runs. He’s alone in the dark. He’s closing his eyes and trying to be brave. He’s in the air, looking down, wondering which of the bodies below are those of his parents. 

Din slams closed fists down on the console in front of him. “Enough,” he shouts, his chest heaving as he tries to wheeze in a breath that goes deeper than the back of his throat. He cannot do this. Does not want to do this. Has no desire to remember any of this. 

He is a Mandalorian. He has spent his whole life sharpening his body into a weapon to protect those he cannot bear to lose because he has lost so very much already. That is all that matters. He is not powerless any more and has not been for a long time. 

He stifles an unbidden, hiccuping sob and gets up. Corin and Paz will be back with the parts soon and then they can fly far, far away from here and he can forget that this ever happened. That he ever remembered. Gradually, Din’s breathing quiets. 

A wave of exhaustion washes over him, his skin prickling dully under the weight of his armour. He slides down the ladder to the cargo hold and opens the sleeping cubby. Grogu peers out at him serenely from his hammock. Din crawls in wordlessly and escapes into the nothingness of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRANSLATION NOTES**
> 
> _Ad'ika_  
>  Child/little one 
> 
> _Mar'e_  
>  At last! (Expression of relief)
> 
>  **PS** : Wanted to mention that I know LadyIrina has not given the kid a name yet in her 'verse. I did decide to go with Grogu here just because that name has really grown on me since S2 E5. 🤗


	2. Gar Kyr'adyc - But You Are Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Thanks for the kind feedback on the first chapter! Very appreciated. I have a good outline for this story, but the last half of this chapter was a difficult birth for some reason. I hope it lands! 🤞
> 
>  **PS : Just want to mention here, in case it's worried anyone, I've deleted most of my social media (both fannish and otherwise). Nothing is wrong! Just a personal decision for my mental health in 2021. I'm still open to comments (and will still respond) on here, just need to step away from everything else. **💜

It’s a strange miracle that Din doesn’t dream. His sleep is blank and deep. So deep that he doesn’t realize Paz and Corin have returned until he is startled awake by the rolling sound of the sleep compartment’s metal door being opened. He blinks into the light that streams in and sees Corin, the hand that had automatically flown to his blaster relaxing. 

“There you are,” his _riduur_ says brightly, “I checked the cockpit first. Not like you to sleep in the middle of the day.” 

It’s so brutally normal that Din feels a hot, flashing sprint of rage tear through him. It’s inexplicable and unacceptable, followed by shame licking at its heels, and Din is grateful he’d slept with his helmet on so that Corin can’t see his face. Can’t be hurt by him. He takes a few steadying breaths, shoving down how raw he still feels from earlier, and replies evenly. 

“Just tired is all. The _ad’ika_ was a handful.” 

“Always is,” Corin hums, leaning over him to lift the child out of his hammock and snuggle him close. “Aren’t you, _verd’ika_?” 

Din is looking at Corin and Grogu, but he feels the arms of his father around him, is lost for a moment in the remembered sensation of being hoisted up onto a hip, his face buried in the softness of a red robe, inhaling the familiar, comforting scent of the fabric. 

He wants desperately to recede back into the blankness of sleep. _Enough_ , he thinks. _Enough_. He wants to yell the word again, pound it into his flesh with his own fists. He feels chaotic. Sick. He hasn’t felt this way in a long, long time and when he had, it’d caused him nothing but trouble. 

Like a specter from that past, Paz appears, darkening the doorway of the sleeping cubby with his hulking form. Paz had taken the brunt of Din’s adolescent anger, steadied him when he could, raged back at him when he couldn’t, but had never, ever given up on him. Hot shame returns, this time seeping deep into Din’s bones. 

“Tell him yet?” Paz grunts. 

Corin turns. “No, not yet,” he says, and then swivels back to Din. “We gotta stay tonight. Couple of the converter coils are out of stock, but shop says they’ll be getting a shipment tomorrow. Can’t beat that luck! We rented a couple rooms at an inn nearby. Paz says he doesn’t want to listen to you snore again tonight.” 

Corin finishes on a laugh, but Din wants to cry. He just wants to leave this place. This planet that somehow holds a broken, sharp little piece of him. Has held it for years without him knowing. Could have held it for years more if not for…

The kid burbles excitedly. Flapping his arms and kicking the air. Once again, Din has the odd sensation of being led and eyes the kid. He’s wiser than he looks. Much wiser. 

Din shimmies out of the cubby with a sigh. 

• • •

The inn isn’t far. On the way there, Din trails numbly behind Paz and Corin, who are debating the merits of different blaster models while Corin bounces the kid from hip to hip, occasionally hiking him up above his head to flail and giggle. It’s all so stupidly normal, Din thinks again. How can everything be this normal when something so profound has just happened? The irrational anger from before hums at the back of Din’s brain like a vibroblade. He’s reminded himself a million times that neither Paz nor Corin have any idea of what Din stumbled into earlier in the day, but it persists anyway. 

It’s that anger that scares him most. He knows how volatile it can be. It’s what had pushed him into the fold of Ranzar Malk’s ilk after Davarax was killed. He’d slummed with them for years, hanging onto his Creed but only just barely. Those years have a shape in his mind like a ragged, filthy shard of glass, piercing and yet somehow dull, more remembered emotion than exact detail now. Spotchka and spice tended to make things hazy. 

Shame roils up in Din again, making him nauseous. This. This is why he cannot do this, why he walked away from that storefront. From Sasena. A not insignificant part of him wanted to run to her, to hug her close and know her again. But he cannot reopen old wounds because they will become gangrenous and eat him from the inside out. He will destroy himself again and hurt those he loves. He thinks of violent fights with Paz, of vibroblades held at throats and words exchanged that could never be unsaid. He grits his teeth to the point of pain when the thought of such anger directed at Corin or the kid floats through his brain. 

He slams the thought shut. Enough. Thinking about this is useless anyway because he’s not going to reopen his past. He’s made his peace with it. Said goodbye to his parents and his life on Aq Vetina long ago, laid it to rest with honour when he’d sworn the Creed and chosen to live by the _Resol’nare_. It’s nice to know that Sasena survived. That’s a blessing not a curse. 

He looks up to see Corin, Paz and the kid a good fifty paces ahead of him. They’ve stopped under a large wooden sign marking an inn and have turned to look at him, probably alarmed that he wasn’t right behind them. Truth be told, Din hadn’t realized he’d fallen so far behind either. He gives his head a shake and quickens his pace. 

“Sorry,” he breathes out as he reaches them, trying to feign nonchalance. He knows that Corin is worried, both from the tightness in his shoulders and from the fact that Din never lets his guard down let alone falls behind. “Got distracted.” 

“By what?” Paz booms. 

Din inhales through his nose. Paz can’t ever leave well enough alone and Din is currently scraping his brain for a reasonable reply or at least a snappy comeback. He’s drawing a blank though and the moment is stretching into awkwardness. 

“Uh…” 

Corin saves him. “Still tired from earlier, _cyare_?” 

“Huh? Oh yeah. I am.” Din nods. 

“That’s what you get for napping in the middle of the damn day, _vod_ ,” Paz chides, punching his arm. 

“Guess so.”

Corin shoots him a long look and Din knows he’s still as worried as Paz is oblivious. Funny how times have changed. Even with the helmet, Din can’t sneak much past him these days. But Grogu’s eyes get all big and wide as a couple of locals step out of the inn, arms laden with delicious smelling takeaway food, and the focus shifts away from Din. The kid is practically doing somersaults as he tries to wiggle out of Corin’s arms and go home with the nice ladies and their food. 

“Better get the womp rat something to eat before he disowns us,” Corin says, tipping his head back in a laugh and then heading inside. 

Din makes to follow but a bulky, blue-armoured arm blocks the door. 

“Paz,” Din says, an edge of warning in his voice, “I’m really not in the—” 

“ _K’uur, vod’ika_. For once in my life I’m not being an _osi’kovid_.” Paz drops his arm and puts his large hand on Din’s shoulder. “You okay?” 

Din softens in spite of himself. Not so oblivious after all. Paz may be a hulking, idiotic brute sometimes, but he’s all heart underneath. “Yeah, _ori’vod_ ,” he replies, “I’m good. Just thinking.” 

“Woah, woah,” Paz needles, “Thinking? I didn’t know you could do th—” 

Din rolls his eyes good-naturedly under his helmet and brushes past Paz to enter the inn. 

“Get some new material, _di’kut_. You can only call someone stupid so many times before it becomes a mirror.”

• • •

The inn’s tavern is...nice. Night had been falling as they walked to the inn, but despite the dark outside, the tavern is warmly lit and cheery. It’s not fancy, but it’s clean and the people in it seem relaxed and happy. Din thinks, drily, that they ought to let Corin pick their accommodations more often. Still, he feels a little uncomfortable. He’s more of a dimly lit hive of scum and villainy kind of guy, even if that’s changed a bit since Grogu and Corin came along. 

They’re at a table in the back corner waiting for a server when Din notices. One of the wait staff is wearing a red dress. The torso is adorned with a complex beaded inlay and Din has no doubt as to where she must have purchased the dress. His mouth goes dry. 

Paz and Corin are talking about what to order and Corin is offering to stay down in the tavern with the kid, who is thoroughly delighted by the bright colours and sounds of the restaurant, while Paz and Din go and eat upstairs. Din thinks he should probably figure out what to order, but his ability to concentrate is shot through and the rest of the world suddenly seems very distant, like he’s looking at it through layers of gauze. His focus narrows down to the swish of the red fabric and he feels very small, like a toddler sitting on the floor watching his mother’s skirts as she cooks. As she hums his favourite song, the one about morning sunshine. 

He watches her move from one table to another and then draw nearer as she approaches their table. He knows he’s staring, his head physically turned towards her, making his gaze obvious despite the helmet, but he can’t seem to muster the movement needed to turn away. She stops before him, standing a few feet away from the table, and very deliberately stares into his t-visor. 

“Hey there, big boy. See something you like?” she asks, her voice conveying not the lilt of a genuine flirt but annoyance at the scruffbag she thinks is leering at her. 

Din just sits there stunned, the world a strange, watery unreality to him. Then Grogu wraps a tiny hand around one of the fingers of the gloved hand he’s resting on the table. That tender little point of contact combined with his son’s soft, knowing coo pulls him back to the surface. He’s half-drowning still, but regains the ability to speak at least. 

“Sorry,” he blurts, embarrassment blazing across his entire body, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I was just—” 

“Oh kriff,” Paz interjects, “Please excuse my incredibly awkward friend. We don’t want any trouble, ma’am. Just food. Ain’t that right, big boy?” He slaps Din on shoulder and then rattles off an order, asking for certain dishes to go and obviously ordering enough for Din too. Din’s grateful for that small kindness, knowing Paz has done it to save him further embarrassment. 

The server leaves and a strained silence settles over the table. Grogu is still latched onto Din’s finger, leaned over from his high chair and sprawled partly across the table to reach. Paz is sitting stiffly behind the barrier of his helmet and Corin is looking directly at Din, like he’s desperate to see past the tint of Din’s t-visor. 

Din’s whole body feels tight, like a band stretched as far as it will go. Bizarrely, he can smell his mother’s subtle perfume, the petal-soft scent of her hair, like his face is buried in it. The morning of the attack on his homeworld comes clattering into his mind, a memory he didn’t even know he had. He’d stood at the kitchen counter with his father, juicing jogan fruits into a bowl to make a surprise breakfast for his mother. She’d picked him up and twirled him around, delighted, when she’d come downstairs. The familiar smell of her hair had made him feel happy and safe. 

“Din?” Corin’s voice seems to echo into his consciousness from far away. “Din, _kar’ta_ , are you okay?” 

He tries to respond but there suddenly seems to be no air available in the room. He thinks for a second that the filtration system in his helmet has jammed, but the heaviness in his chest belies that. He knows this feeling, though he hasn’t felt it this way, this intensely, in years. Din stands up suddenly as his body’s desire to flee becomes increasingly difficult to tamp down. 

Corin makes to stand up and reach out for him, but Din takes a step back. He needs to leave. He can’t breath. He needs to get out of this tavern and maybe outside for a bit. 

It occurs to him, faintly, that he needs to say something, that Corin is already staring at him with concern soft in his eyes and he doesn’t want to alarm him over nothing. Or, truthfully, have him follow after him. 

“I need—” he stumbles. His throat is tight, but he’s determined to get this out. “Just need fresh air. Back soon.” 

Corin’s still half out of his seat, but Din manages to wave him down with his hand, turning on his heel and walking out the tavern’s back door. 

The alley behind the inn is dark and quiet. Like a wounded animal, Din looks for a place to hide. A few steps bring him to a smaller side alley running between two buildings across from the inn. The glow of the street lamps barely reach into it and the privacy it offers is a welcome relief. 

Din tries to take a few steadying breaths, but this only makes him feel worse. Despite its coolness, the night air feels thick, like it can only trickle into his lungs as a thick syrup and he ends up gulping for air. He shakes. The slam of metal doors and the screams of his parents echo in his ears again and again and again. Smoke burns in his nostrils. 

He realizes dimly that he’s having a full-on panic attack, which just makes him spiral further. He hasn’t had an attack like this in well over a decade and is terrified of losing control, of being vulnerable, especially on an unfamiliar planet. He scrapes about desperately in his mind for what to do. He’s held Corin through similar attacks a few times in the past years, had given comfort and reasonable advice then, but just cannot seem to muster anything up for himself. Din manages only to yank at the cowl of his cape, needing it away from his spasming throat. 

He doesn’t register the footsteps until they’re right up on him, until the hand that springs unconsciously for his blaster is stopped by a firm grip on his wrist. He brings his knee up into the form in front of him and slams it blindly into the soft flesh of an unarmoured stomach. 

His blaster is in Corin’s face before he realizes who’s in front him. 

“ _Shab’ni_ , Corin,” he barks, the blaster tumbling from his grip. “I’m sorry. Oh fuck. I’m sorry, are you okay?” He scrabbles down beside his _riduur_ , his violently shaking hands hovering awkwardly beside each of Corin’s shoulders. This is exactly what he’d feared would happen. 

Corin is winded, coughing out little staccato breaths, but he croaks a reply. “Yes—fine—I should—not have—snuck up—” 

Din is kneeling on the filthy ground, his own breath still strained and molten tears threatening to spill out from his rapidly blinking eyes. He wants to leave here, wants to rip out all the shrapnel of his past that this cursed planet has lodged into him, and run far, far away. But he feels like he can’t move. Corin’s breathing is returning to normal, he’s standing up, extending a hand to help Din follow, but Din can’t. His breath is gone again and his chest is on fire and shoulders are shaking now with soundless sobs. He leans forward further, his arms wrapped tightly around his middle and his helmet almost resting on the grimy pavement between Corin’s feet. 

“Woah, woah, _kar’ta_. _Ner kar’ta_.” Corin’s voice sluices over him like cool water. “I’m here. I’m right here. Just listen to my voice.” 

“What do I do?” The question is out before Din can stop it. 

“First you are going to sit up. Let me help you, okay?” Corin’s voice is plain and even. Calm. His hands are easy and precise, like Din is a skittish animal. Din tries to focus on every little touch and point of contact as Corin settles him back against the wall of the narrow alley, seated but with his back straight, face up off the ground. Din still can’t breath properly, but at least feels somewhat less pathetic. 

“Now I’m going to unlock your helmet and lift it up, just a bit, so you can take a few good breaths with me. No one’s around. It’s safe.” 

The release mechanism clicks open and cool, unfiltered air hits his lower face. Corin holds up his helmet with one hand and takes one of Din’s hands with the other. He pulls Din’s hand forward and places it on his own stomach. The fabric of Corin’s shirt is smooth and warm beneath his hand and Corin’s abdomen rises and falls with continuous, quiet breaths. Din can’t see with the t-visor tilted up, but that’s almost a blessing. He tries to focus on the sensations instead, on the solid presence of Corin in front of him and on where their bodies connect. 

“Okay, you can feel me breathing, right?” Corin asks. “Focus on that. Start trying to match your breath to mine as best you can. It’s okay if it takes a bit.” 

Din has done this before, for Corin. Has anchored Corin in exactly this way. The familiarity of it is helpful, sweet in its intimacy, and Din’s breath gets a little deeper into his lungs each time until he fully matches Corin’s unfaltering rhythm. 

“Good, _kar’ta_ ,” Corin murmurs. “Keep going. We can sit as long as you need and whenever you’re ready, we can get up.”

A precarious relief gradually begins to tether Din more firmly in the moment. His awareness of his own body settles and he’s less trapped within himself. The thunder within his chest is rolling off and oxygen is beginning to restore his ability to order his thoughts. With Corin in front of him, stroking a thumb across the back of the hand that Din still has pressed to his stomach, Din is steady enough to run over what has occurred to bring him to this moment. He saw someone from his childhood, someone who he thought was dead. Someone who he’d mourned. That had brought up a lot of grief and anger, which had sent him into this tailspin. But Grogu had led him to her, to this. That had to mean something. Grogu’s intuition through the Force was not without merit and, reluctantly, Din begins to accept that this isn’t something he should shove away. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to go talk to Sasena as the kid seems to want, but jamming the revelation down and fleeing from it hasn’t really met with resounding success either. 

Paz’s voice, gruff but compassionate, echoes in his thoughts. _A burden’s easier to carry if it’s shared, vod’ika_. How often had Paz said that to him as he soothed him down from childhood night terrors? And once when he’d raged at Din for shutting him out, for running away from his problems to slum it with Malk’s thugs under the guise of bringing in income for the Covert. Din had denied it at the time, had walked right back into his next job with Malk’s crew, but Paz had been right. 

So, Din doesn’t really want to run again now, not anymore. He’s not sure how to go forward from here, but he knows it will be easier with Corin at his side. He removes Corin’s hand from where it’s tipping up his helmet and threads their fingers together. 

“Ready, _kar’ta_.”

• • •

They walk in soft silence back into the inn. The back door is right next to the stairs leading up to the lodgings above the tavern and Din heads directly to their room while Corin peels off temporarily to check in with Paz and the kid. He finds the room easily and uses the code cylinder Corin had pressed into his hand to unlock the door. 

Unsure what to do once he’s in there, Din sits on the edge of the bed. He needs Corin to lead right now. The shaking of his hands has abated into fine quivers, but while he’s less acutely anxious, he’s ragged and raw, like he’s been raked over coals. He’s also completely exhausted, a frustrating, bone-deep fatigue that makes little sense to him given that he’d spent most of the afternoon asleep. He feels shamefully weak for a moment, but admonishes himself for that. He would never say that to Corin, would he? How many times has he assured Corin of his own strength in moments like these? 

The door to their quarters hisses open and Corin enters, smiling reassuringly at Din and carrying a few packages of what must be food, which he sets down. He crosses the room and sits next to Din taking his hands between both of his. He’s outwardly calm, but Din can still feel concern rippling off him. 

“Paz is gonna watch the _ad’ika_ for a bit. He’s down there flirting with the wait staff to get free cookies.” Corin blinks a couple times and then huffs a laugh. “Grogu, I mean, not Paz!” 

That gets a laugh out of Din, too, some of his tension snapping away as he imagines both Raga’s reaction to the other possibility and Paz ingratiating himself to strangers for snacks. Maybe the clarification wasn’t completely unwarranted… 

Corin’s smile and eyes are bright now, but his movements are still gentle and slow. Mindful. He lifts a hand to Din’s helmet, fingers resting on the release mechanism. 

“This okay?” he checks. 

Din’s heart gives a little clench at Corin’s respectfulness. It’s rote after all these years, but no less appreciated, especially not when Din feels this vulnerable. “Yeah, _cyare_. Thanks.” 

Din closes his eyes as the helmet is lifted off and replaced with the cradle of Corin’s hands. 

“I’m sorry for hurting you.” He feels a little sick with that still. With the image of his blaster in Corin’s face. 

“ _Cuy naas, ner kar’ta_.” The pads of Corin’s thumbs run soothingly along his cheekbones. “You were startled. No harm done.” 

“I could have—what if I’d—” 

“ _K’uur_ , Din. You didn’t.” Corin’s arms encircle Din, pulling him close. 

Din sighs and nods into his _riduur_ ’s shoulder. He needs to let it go, at least for now. He tries to relax into Corin’s arms, but his mind still whirs. He should probably explain to Corin what, exactly, is going on right now. He deserves an explanation. Din pulls back and looks at Corin. 

“Corin, I want—I want to tell you about...about a few things, about why this happened just now and I need your advice and I…” Din trails off, feeling suddenly very small and very tired. Brow furrowed, he stares down at his gloved hands as a vague anger at himself slithers into his gut. “Sorry,” he exhales. “Sorry, I just need a minute before—”

“Din, you don’t need to explain anything right now.” Din opens his mouth to protest but Corin just ploughs ahead. “Look, I know from my own experiences how drained you must be right now. Let’s take some of this armour off and lie down for a bit. Paz is keeping watch so we’re pretty safe and I’m not going anywhere so there’s lots of time to talk. It doesn’t have to be right this second.” 

A warm rush of appreciation for his husband’s kind nature chases away the choler within him. Din nods and extends the vambrace with his armour controls out so that Corin can demagnetize his beskar. 

“ _Vor’e, kar’ta_ ,” he says, yielding gratefully. 

• • •

When he wakes a couple hours later in a warm cocoon of blankets, cheek pressed snugly against the smooth skin of Corin’s chest while Corin combs nimble fingers through his hair, Din marvels a bit at how different this is from previous times when he was overwhelmed by memories from his past. There is no arguing, no picking fights, no waking up cold and hungover and full of regret. He and Xi’an had an...agreement...back in the days he’d run jobs for Malk. But the comfort they’d sought from each other had been rough—impersonal and transactional—and, in hindsight, had usually left Din feeling worse than before. 

This time, Din feels better, wrapped up and secure. Calm again. He stretches a bit to let Corin know he’s awake and finds himself tugged a little closer. 

“How are you feeling?” The question is mumbled into his hair and Din finally feels like he has the strength to talk about everything that happened today. He doesn’t answer the question, just begins, knowing that Corin will accept whatever he has to say. 

“I saw—today I saw, well the kid led me to,” Din searches for the right description, “a ghost, I guess.” 

Corin turns onto his side to face Din and keeps light touches running across Din’s skin as he walks Corin through everything. He’s exhausted again by the time he’s done but he feels lighter and a little less fractured by it all, like the wound is still raw but the infecting shrapnel removed. 

“You know I’ll be right beside you, whatever you decide, Din.” Corin’s hand comes to rest on his face. Din covers it with his own. 

“I know.” 

“Let’s get a good night’s sleep before any decisions though, okay. We have time. We can always stay here a few more days, too.” 

Din’s knocks his forehead against Corin’s. “Thank you, _kar’ta_. Love you.” 

Corin hums. “Love you, too, _cyare_. I’m gonna go get the little menace. Paz is probably rocking back and forth in a corner by now.” Corin stands and pulls his shirt on. “Get yourself ready for bed, I’ll be back soon.” 

He leans down for a kiss, and Din grabs his hand. 

“Hey,” he says, feeling a little sheepish for asking this, “Can you...can you tell Paz what happened? I’m just...not sure I can explain it all again. I know that’s silly, I just—” 

“Not silly, Din. And yes, of course.” 

• • •

Morning breaks. Corin is asleep, curled up sweetly against Din and the _ad’ika_ is in the small hollow between their two bodies. Grogu is awake but oddly placid, blinking perceptive eyes at Din. He tilts his head, his big ears flicking in an unspoken question. Din doesn’t need words to know what Grogu’s getting at. 

“I don’t know, little buddy. I’m thankful that you…that you took me where you took me, but I don’t know what bothering her would really accomplish. For either of us.” 

Grogu woos, his small hand reaching for his father’s face. Din catches the chubby claws in his own hand and gives them a squeeze. 

“I’ll think about it, _alor’ika_.” 

That satisfies Grogu, who burrows into him a little closer. 

“But you gotta respect what I decide.”

The kid chirps out a sleepy, agreeable burble. Din smiles. It’s reassuring to know his little _aliit_ has his back. 

He waits until his son is asleep again and then extracts himself carefully from the bed. He’d redressed in his underarmour out of an abundance of caution before he’d fallen back asleep last night and is grateful for that now as he simply and stealthily reattaches his beskar. He needs some time to just think things over and from his glance at the chronometer on the bedside table, he’s up at just the right time to catch the sunrise. It’s a time of day he loves, the quiet stillness of early morning seeming to make space for unhindered thought. And he has lots of thinking to do… 

He scales up the side of the inn easily. It’s one of the taller buildings in the district and likely offers a good vantage point. He flips over the lip of the roof, expecting seclusion, and nearly jumps out of his skin when he finds Paz sitting up there, back to him and facing the crimson sun that is edging over the curve of the planet’s horizon. 

“ _Vod’ika_.” 

“Paz. You scared the shit outta me. What are you doing up here?” 

“Waiting for you, _vod_.” Paz turns around and then pats the duracrete he’s sitting on. Din joins him. 

“How’d you know I’d be up here?” He knows the answer, but needles anyway. 

“Hm, ‘member when the Covert was on Ortussa?”

“Ah, yeah.” They’d lived there most of Din’s teenage years. He’d loved that planet. All dilute greens, delicate vegetation, and tall, bleached white buildings. They’d lived below all that, of course, but large swathes of the planet were uninhabited, the tangled forests making a perfect training ground for the kids being brought up in the Fighting Corp. 

“You spent a lot of time sneaking up to the rooftops back then. Especially after rough nights.” 

Paz had followed him sometimes back then, too. That was around the time they’d started drifting apart, Din pushing him away as his appreciation for Paz’ protectiveness curdled into distaste for his own weakness, but Paz was nothing if not dogged with his guardianship. Din had spent more than one morning on that planet watching a sunrise through red-rimmed eyes, Paz a solid, silent comfort beside him. 

“I take it Corin filled you in then?” 

“Yeah, _vod_. He did.” 

Din nods, not sure what to say. 

“I can leave if you want, Din.” Paz isn’t taunting. His voice is serene and soft. 

“No...no, that’s okay.” 

They sit in companionable silence for a long time. The sun ascends steadily, casting out the shadows of night and bathing the small city in a vibrant, crepuscular glow, burning off the fog that had settled along the narrow streets. From here, Din can see the sprawl of the open-air market he’d been at yesterday. The buildings of the surrounding commercial district are saturated in sunlight now, their windows catching it and refracting it back out. He pictures Sasena waking in one of those buildings, opening her shop for the day. Wonders if she has any children. Wonders if she’ll think today about the Mandalorian she saw yesterday. 

The confession tumbles out before Din can really think about it. “I’m not sure what to do, Paz.” 

Paz remains silent for a long, stretching minute before he speaks. 

“Sometimes it’s best to leave the past behind.” Strangely, now that’s been said, Din wants to protest it, almost does, but then Paz continues. “But sometimes we need to face it in order to honour it. In order to honour those who have carried us into our present. And in order to make peace with it. Like when we went to recover Davarax’s helmet.” 

Paz says the last part softly, but Din can tell that he’s looking at him pointedly through the tint of his visor. 

“That was different,” Din counters tiredly, swinging back to dread at the prospect of confronting his past, “That was to...to avenge him.” 

“You’re mincing words, Din. It was to avenge his honour. To face all he meant to us and honour that through action.” 

“I _have_ honoured my parents. I’ve—so much of who I am as a father is from—from them.” There’s a lump in Din’s throat now. 

“And does it honour your parents, _vod’ika_ , to walk away from what little you have left of them?” 

That stings. Years ago, that kind of question from Paz would have sent him flying off the handle. But he sees its merit now. Gets what Paz is trying to do and appreciates the gentle challenge. He leans forward, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. He knows what he ought to do, but still doubts his strength. 

“Think about it, _vod_.” Paz slaps him on the back. “Whatever you decide, we got you.” 

And then Paz gets up and walks away, leaving Din alone with his thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRANSLATION NOTES**
> 
> _Riduur, cyare, (ner) kar’ta_  
>  Spouse, love, (my) heart
> 
>  _Ad’ika, verd’ika, alor’ika_  
>  Child/little one, little soldier, little boss 
> 
> _Vod, vod’ika, ori’vod_  
>  Comrade/sibling, little sibling, big sibling 
> 
> _K’uur_  
>  Hush
> 
>  _Osi’kovid, di’kut, shab’ni_  
>  Shithead, idiot, fuck me
> 
>  _Cuy naas_  
>  It's nothing 
> 
> _Vor’e_  
>  Thanks 
> 
> _Aliit_  
>  Family


	3. Ni Partayli - I Remember You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to every single one of you who took the time to read, leave kudos and comment on the first two parts of this story. It really helped me to stay motivated in writing this. I struggled a lot with this third chapter and am still really not sure about it, but I am happy I pushed myself to finish and post it. It was tough and I hope at least some of what I wanted to accomplish with this works. I don't have the same magic with OCs that LadyIrina does, but I hope you enjoy this exploration of Din's past and healing. There is one more installment after this one and I hope to complete it by the end of next week. 💜

Din goes back to the Razor Crest while Corin, Paz and the kid go to get the converter coils. Three people to pick up a couple of ship parts is probably excessive, but Din appreciates the time alone. He loses himself in the routine of maintenance: flushing fuel lines, transpacitor checks, resynchronizing the power flux connectors. It’s a pattern instilled in him by Davarax long ago and there is comfort in its familiarity. 

The Crest is like an old friend. Reliable and strong. Full of memories. He leans down from recalibrating the cockpit’s aural sensor and ghosts a hand over the main controls, thinking of the first time Davarax had let him fly the Crest. He’d been thrilled, perched on Davarax’s knee and soaking in his teacher’s instructions like a sponge. The rhythm of flying had come to him easily, moving his thoughts from trepidation to natural, consuming focus faster than anything ever had. It had been the first time he’d felt like he was home since everything had changed. And the Crest still felt like home. Not only because he’d spent more time in it than anywhere else, but because of the people and the memories it sheltered now and in the past. 

Din checks a few more controls and then sits down in the pilot’s seat. He pulls out a rag to clean up. Some of the finer adjustments had required bare hands and he needs to wipe the grease off them before putting his gloves back on. It’s a habitual action that he usually does without thought, but this time he lingers over a fine, hairline scar on his left palm. 

Another memory, one from his life before the Covert comes to mind. This time, it settles gently within him rather than crashing in and catching him off guard. He was in the backyard of their small townhouse, tinkering with his father’s speeder. He wasn’t, technically, allowed to touch it without his father there, but it was sometimes more temptation than he could handle to be outside with it and _not_ pretend to drive it. 

So he’d been on it, play-pressing buttons when he’d turned it on and launched it directly into their storage shed. It hadn’t been a hard hit, but it bent the outrigger spokes, dented the shed’s durasteel doors, and sent both of his parents racing out of the house in a panic. It’d been his dad who’d picked him up off the ground and dusted him off. Din had cried and cried and cried. And not once had his father been angry. He’d wrapped the cut Din had gotten on his palm when he fell off the bike, apologized for forgetting to engage the bike’s safety locks, and told him to respect the lesson his experience had just taught him. Then he didn’t mention the incident again until several days later when he'd taken Din out in the backyard and let him help with the repairs. Afterwards, his father had shown him a few of the controls—namely the braking lever—and calmly explained to Din why he needed to wait a few more years before getting on the bike again. Din, a genuine child, swore that he would wait and, despite his enthusiasm for the bike, kept his promise. 

A ghost of a smile plays at Din’s lips. He rubs over the scar again idly. He’d never purposefully buried his thoughts of those times, but it’s been years since he’d let himself think about them unhindered. And he’s realizing that there’s a happiness in them that he’d been denying himself along with their pain. 

Din flips the switch for the ship's chronometer, checking the time. Corin, Paz and the kid will be back soon. He thinks about running the pre-flight sequences in preparation and then sighs. 

The only friend he’d told about that speeder accident? The person who, in those days, he’d told everything to, no matter how embarrassing? 

Sasena. 

And that’s just it isn’t it? She’s more than just a connection to his old life. She’s a friend. And Din doesn’t make a habit of walking away from friends. 

He inhales, long and deep, through his nose, and then neatly folds up the grease rag in his hands, stowing it in the tool kit below his seat before sliding down the ladder to the cargo bay and lowering the exit ramp. 

• • •

It’s a warm afternoon. Puffy white clouds drift lazily over the sun, blocking it temporarily and then floating on by, making the return of the sun’s glow even more inviting. They’d parked the Crest near the edge of the sprawling, rural field-port on the outskirts of the settlement, putting it within walking distance of everything, but far enough out to be surrounded by farm fields. 

The planet is idyllic. There are farm hands in the fields and their laughter floats on the breeze. It’s harvest time and despite the heat of the afternoon, there are crisp notes in the air that, along with the hints of gold on the planet’s green foliage, indicate that this is the hemisphere’s autumn. Everything appears calm, peaceful, safe; Din hopes desperately that it’s not an illusion. That this planet really is what he sees now. Real peace is hard to come by in this galaxy. 

The kid totters in front of Din and Corin on the dirt path that will soon give way to the town’s neat cobblestone streets. He’s chasing insects with little grabby hands, occasionally tripping over his own feet. Corin makes a strained noise beside him when Grogu catches a particularly large-winged insect in his chubby hand and promptly jams it into his mouth with a delighted squeal. 

“ _Ad’ika_!” Corin wipes a hand over his eyes. “You just ate. A lot. Two sweet buns and half of your dad’s stew from last night.” 

Grogu turns around, a lacey wing poking out from his mouth. 

Din can’t even stifle his laughter. Where yesterday the normalcy of Corin and the kid’s interactions had irritated him, today they are a balm, soothing his jangling nerves. 

“He’ll be fine, _kar’ta_. Stomach of beskar.” 

“Yeah, well one day he’s gonna eat something poisonous.” 

“Hasn’t yet.” 

“Great parenting advice, Din. When’s your holobook coming out? Will I get a signed copy?” Corin’s arms are crossed firmly against his chest and the corners of his mouth are pulled down in a frown, but his eyes are mirthful beneath his scowling brow. 

Din grunts a laugh. He wishes he could pull his helmet off, lean over and kiss that frown off his husband’s mouth, but he settles for knocking his shoulder against Corin’s, beskar clinking. 

They distract each other like that throughout the rest of the walk to the commercial district, playfully teasing each other and laughing at Grogu’s antics. Din’s grateful. Without it, he’d probably have turn-tailed and ran back to Paz and the Crest. 

The mood shifts as they reach the market, though. Din’s reached the sweaty stage of nervous and the food Corin had forced him to eat before they’d started into town feels like a rock in his stomach despite the fact that he’d slipped half of it to Grogu anyway. He’d not really felt like eating, but with Paz insisting that “Everything feels better after snacks” and Corin tutting that “Caf doesn’t constitute a meal no matter how much blue milk and sweetener you put in it,” he’d sent Paz up to the cockpit and scarfed a couple things down. He regrets that now. 

By the time they hit the alley Grogu led him down yesterday, Din is all but vibrating, feeling about ready to tip up his helmet and puke into a sewer grate. He stops for a second, needing a moment to compose himself. Corin had started carrying the kid once they’d reached the main part of town, and in the quiet of the alley, Din reaches his arms out for him. Corin transfers him gently into his arms, and then lingers, one hand staying on the kid and the other settling on the fabric just above Din’s chestplate. 

Din closes his eyes, but he can hear Corin breathing, slow and steady. It’s a subtle offering, but one that Din picks up gratefully. He works to match Corin’s breathing like he did the night before. Grogu nuzzles his head into Din’s shoulder, and then, as his breathing begins to even out, he feels his son’s tiny hand press, palm down, next to Corin’s. A curious little surge of warmth seems to ripple out from that hand and into Din, followed by a sense of calm energy. He can’t say for sure, but given the half-sleepy way Grogu blinks at him afterward, Din thinks it might have been the Force. Whatever it is, he’ll take it. 

Clutching his son close and touching his helmet to Corin’s forehead, Din continues down the alley. He’s got Corin and the kid beside him and Paz waiting supportively back at the Razor Crest. He can do this.

• • •

“I can’t do this.” 

He’s standing on the steps of Sasena’s shop. Moments before his hand had been hovering over the button that would swing open the wooden door. Now he’s spun around looking desperately at Corin and the kid. 

Corin’s reply is soft. “You can.” 

Din nods. “What if I say something stupid?” The question strikes him as ridiculously juvenile the moment he says it and he’s glad the helmet hides his flush. 

“You will.” Corin cracks a teasing half smile and Grogu gurgles impishly in Din’s arms. “But it’ll be fine. We promise, _cyare_.” 

Din smiles in spite of himself and shifts Grogu so he can reach out and quickly squeeze Corin’s hand. Then he knocks the button with his elbow and walks inside. 

The shop is welcoming and cozy. Warm, ornately carved wood and brightly coloured displays of clothes. Not all of them are in the traditional style of Aq Vetina, indicating their maker’s talent and versatility as an artisan. Sunlight filters in from outside and a few dustmotes float lazily in the beams. A bell had chimed when they’d come through the door. No one is out front yet, though a voice had called out, “Just a minute!” from somewhere in the back. A little ache of gladness pierces Din. For a shop owner to be so trusting, the peace he’d observed earlier had to be both real and rooted. He thinks of the scars on Sasena’s face, having no doubt where they’d come from, and sends a silent thank you to whatever force led her here, to this tranquil planet. 

Din looks around while he waits, a melancholic awe falling over him. He feels like a man out of time, as if he’s stepped through the last decades of his life and directly back into his childhood. He and Sasena had spent so many afternoons in her parents’ shop. Din had often gone there after school as his parents worked until the early evening and he wasn’t old enough yet to be on his own for extended periods. So the shop had become a playground for them. A display of clothing or a rack of fabric could be anything to a child. A cave, a ship, a silk-draped palace. 

Sasena had also patiently taught him how to handle a needle and thread, a skill he still uses for gear repairs. He was as clumsy with it as she was natural, but he’d managed to develop a reasonable proficiency under her tutelage. He’d started teaching her Huttese in return, languages being his gift. His mother was a translator for local officials, and Din figures he probably would have followed in her footsteps had things not...changed. 

The rustling in the back of the shop draws nearer. Behind him, Corin takes a step closer and squeezes his elbow just as Sasena appears. Her arms are full of fabric and she doesn’t look up right away. 

“Thank you for being so patient! New shipment! How can I—” Her words catch as she lifts her head, smile faltering briefly before broadening. “Oh! It’s you!” She sets the fabric down and smooths her hands over the apron she’s wearing. “What can I—”

“I remember you.” And there it is, his something stupid. He winces wryly under the helmet. At least he got it over with early. 

Her laugh is bright and melodic. “I remember you, too.” Din’s heart gives a little start, even though he knows she means from yesterday. “Change your mind on that tea?” 

“Sasena.” 

She startles slightly at that. How he can successfully negotiate with Tusken raiders but make such a mess of this is beyond him. He sighs. In for a credit, he supposes. 

“Sartora. Your name is Sasena Sartora.” 

That puts her on guard, but then Grogu coos and she seems to relax a fraction. 

“How do you kn—” 

“Din Djarin.” Her eyes widen and Din would very much like Corin to just take over the talking. “My name is Din Djarin.” 

The stillness in the room is absolute for a moment, devoid even of sounds of breath. Then Sasena moves, her skirts swishing as she comes out from around the shop’s counter. The shop isn’t overly large and that puts her only a few paces in front of Din. She’s at least a foot shorter than him now, but she has the same quiet intensity he remembers from childhood, her gaze locking and keen. But her face has lost its colour and there is a fine tremor in her voice when she speaks. 

“Din Djarin.” 

“Yes.” 

She looks over his shoulder at Corin and then back into his t-visor for a moment before softening her gaze onto the child in his arms. Her voice is painfully quiet when she speaks. 

“Din Djarin died a long time ago.” Her face is suddenly very tired. “Look, I’m not sure what this is all about.”

She doesn’t seem frightened. Just confused and sad. Regret seeps in. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Shock, maybe? But she just looks so resigned. This was a mistake. 

“I’m sorry,” he offers weakly. “I can’t—I can’t take this off—” He gestures to his helmet. “But, uh..” An idea hits him. He turns around to pass Grogu to Corin and then tugs off his glove, holding his hand out to her palm up. “See that scar? It’s from when I crashed my father’s speeder bike into our shed. Look, I know this is insane, but we grew up together. We were in the same class in school. We once got in trouble for hiding under the slide in the play yard to read instead of going in for music class. Do you remember how much I hated music class? You loved it, but you stayed out with me because I said—” 

She grabs his hand and yanks it to her, eyes wide. He flinches internally, not used to anyone’s touch but Corin and the kid’s, but forces himself to remain very still. She traces fingertips over the white line of the scar. When she looks up, her eyes are wet but a watery smile is playing at the corners of her mouth. 

She laughs around a sob. “Din Djarin.” She grabs his arms and gives him a frantic shake. “Stars above. You—your whole family—I checked survivor registers for you for years. There weren’t—” Her voice catches and quiets. “There weren’t many of us. We ended up pretty scattered after the massacre. But there were a few. Your name never showed up.” 

“I was taken in by Mandalorians. My parents were both dead and I had no other family. They raised me.” 

She lowers her hands, eyes distant as she nods her head. Then she crosses the room, flicks off the shop’s open sign and latches the door. She pats down her apron again, taking in the three of them in with a thoughtful look and exhaling a shaky breath. 

“Well…” she says, half to herself, “I think I’d better put on that tea.” 

• • •

Steam curls up from the cup in front of Din. Grogu squirms, wanting the broth Sasena has set out for him, but it needs to cool. Din scratches his son’s head and whispers to him that he has to wait. 

Sasena sits a cup of tea down in front of Corin and then pulls out the chair across from Din, sitting down and wrapping her hands firmly around her own simple wooden cup. The apartment above the store is modest, but has the same warm sense of comfort as the shop. It’s lived in. There’s dishes in the sink and Sasena had cleared off a few used caf mugs from the large wooden table before they sat down. A couple of tooka dolls and model starships sit in a corner and a loth-cat is curled up asleep on a window ledge. It’s clear that it’s not only Sasena who lives here and Din feels both glad for her and nervous about the prospect of meeting everyone else. He bounces Grogu a bit on his knee as a distraction, making the kid burble and laugh. 

“You’re so gentle with him.” Sasena’s eyes are soft. “You really are Din, aren’t you?” It’s not a real question, not one that seeks an answer. It’s filled with a hushed wonder. She looks at Corin. “Are you his…?” 

“I’m his husband, yes.” They’d already swapped names, but the mechanics of their introductions had been stilted, everyone too overwhelmed to really do things properly. 

“Are you a Mandalorian, too?” 

“Me? No. Well, not fully, anyway. Din’s got a habit of taking in strays. He, uh, found me a couple of times when I’d been pretty...lost. And then I just overstayed my welcome until he married me.” 

Din puffs out an exasperated laugh. “That’s not—” He shoots a sidelong glance at Corin under the helmet. The self-deprecation is in jest, but it feels a little too close to the real self-doubt that plagued Corin for most of their early relationship and still resurfaces from time to time. “I’d say the kid found us for each other, actually. And then we spent well over a year with each of us thinking the other wanted something different until we got our heads screwed on straight and realized we wanted the same thing. That’s the short of it anyway.” 

Corin reaches a hand out to Din’s shoulder and looks at him with a mixture of fondness and habitual contrition. “Well, that’s a maybe a better way of putting it.” 

Sasena breaks into a bright grin. “My partner will be home later this evening and you can meet her. Willa. She’s a field manager at one of the main granaries here. If you haven’t noticed, this is a pretty quiet planet. Cereal grains are our main export.” 

Her gaze drops to Grogu, who happily reaches out for her. She extends her arm across the table to place two fingers in his hand, smitten. “We have little ones, too. Twins. Rioa and Ell. Though they haven’t been as little as this one for a long time. They’re at school right now.” 

It’s a lot of information. Din’s face feels a little warm, his eyes a little hot. He knows he should say something, but he’s got that sense of unreality again. 

“It’s—” he tries, but his voice catches. He clears his throat. “It’s peaceful here?” She just implied that, but he needs to confirm. Wants certainty. 

Sasena was a quick study when he knew her last and it’s clear that’s still true, a sad understanding falling across her face. “It is. The industrial farming on this planet made us...useful to the Empire. There were some hard years, years when most of our harvest was remanded by the Empire to feed troops and food and credits were scarce, but compared to many...” She trails off, looking between Din and Corin, sensing that neither of them had escaped the Imperial machine so easily. 

Din doesn’t need to look at Corin to know his face will show badly hidden guilt. He bumps his knee to his husband's under the table. To be honest, he feels a similar guilt. Sasena, her family? They are so innocent. So peaceful. Din’s got an awful lot of blood on his hands to be welcomed here. He pushes the thought aside for now, but barely. 

“You said, yesterday you said that Mandalorians saved your whole family. Who—uh—” 

“I meant all of us, Din, my whole immediate family. We were...beyond lucky. Me, my parents, even Granna, though she passed a few years after, while we were still in the refugee camp.” 

“Refugee camp?” 

“Yes. They were common during the Clone Wars. A lot of people were...displaced.” 

Din nods. He’s seen the effects of three decades of war across the galaxy, but hadn’t thought closely about the logistics of helping people who’d lost their homes and communities. He didn’t really have anyone or anything left to salvage when Davarax had taken him back to the Covert. Or at least, he hadn’t thought he did. 

“It’s actually how we ended up here. One of the volunteers at the camp was Acaronian. He helped with food production and teaching farming skills. I became friends with his daughter...Willa.” She smiles, but her eyes are wet. “We immigrated here when I was thirteen, and Willa and I stayed close.” 

“And your parents?” 

“They live in a nearby settlement. Din, they’ll be so happy to know—” Her voice falters. “They loved you and your parents.” She dips her head, rubbing a hand quickly over each cheek. “Ah, sorry. This is…” 

“A lot,” Din offers. She nods, head still down, and the urge to run flutters up in Din again, along with the sense that he doesn’t belong here, that his presence somehow sullies the peace that’s sheltered Sasena and her family. “Look, Sasena, I’m not sure why I’m here. I probably shouldn’t have bothered you or even come back. I—I’m sorry and maybe it’d be best for me to—” 

She snaps her head up, anger flickering faintly across her delicate features. “Din, do you have any idea what a blessing this is? I searched for you, I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that. You were like a brother and—” 

Din cuts her off. If they’re going to do this, she ought to be allowed a full choice. “I’ve done a lot of things, Sasena. I’m not a ten year old boy anymore. I’m a bounty hunter. I’ve killed people...for credits. Not innocent ones, but I’m not so sure they all deserved to die, either. Coming here was probably selfish and I—” 

She gets up, circling the table to stand before him. He thinks for a second she might ask him to leave, but she just jabs a finger into the beskar of his chest plate. “And you underestimate me, Din Djarin. I’m not a child anymore either. I’m well aware that we all do what we must to survive. Willa and I were both fighting age when the Rebellion was seeking recruits. We hated the Empire but we chose peace and there is a cowardice there that may be worse than anything you’ve done.” 

Grogu gives a thoughtful little wail, as if to agree with her admonishment of his father, and then mimics her, twisting around in Din’s arms to poke a green finger into his chestplate. 

Sasena smiles, winsome amusement lifting away the sadness and anger, and Corin huffs a faint laugh, too. “I think your son agrees with me, Din, and I get the sense he mostly gets what he wants. You at least need to stay tonight. We’ve a great deal to talk about.”

• • •

So they stay. Sasena insists they lodge with her and that she meets Paz, so the four of them end up in the two small guest bedrooms of the apartment. The children, a twin boy and girl in their fourth year of school, take to Grogu immediately, playing games with him and feeding him more snacks than a child his size ought to be able to fit in his stomach. 

Willa is a warm, direct woman, freckled by the sun and sturdy, clearly used to working with both her mind and her hands. Din likes her immediately, reminded somewhat of Cara, but she's wary of him at first, which only makes him like her more, recognizing it as the same protectiveness he has for Grogu and Corin. 

The adults talk late into the night, Din and Sasena reconnecting, Paz and Willa interjecting with embarrassing stories, and Corin sitting close to Din, a warm support through it all. It’s more than Din could have ever hoped for, but it’s exhausting. He falls into bed emotionally drained and dreams of his parents. But for the first time in a long time, it’s not the nightmares of war he’s accustomed to. His dreams are sad and sweet. Soft moments of togetherness that are both dream and memory, quiet days spent playing in sunshine and, in his last moments before waking, his mother’s hands on the sides of his helmet, her eyes soft and alive and full of tears.

• • •

The next morning, Willa ropes Paz and Corin into helping with the harvest, stating that they’re slightly short on hands this year, but Din knows it’s likely to give him and Sasena, who’s keeping the shop closed for the day, time alone to talk. Once the twins are off to school, late because they cannot stop asking questions about what it’s like being a Mandalorian and are thrilled with Din’s patient answers, Sasena takes him and Grogu down to the closed shop. 

“My parents run a tailor shop, too, in a different city,” she explains, her hands running over a red cloak. “They’ll likely retire soon. But it’s been an honour to them to keep some part of Aq Vetina alive. And to me, too.” 

“Is there,” Din’s not sure how to ask this question, not sure he wants to know the answer, “Do you know how many survivors there were?” They’d skirted around the most difficult parts of their shared past last night, focused instead on better childhood memories. 

“A few thousand of us.” 

The planet was home to only a handful of small settlements established by migrant Naboo farmers in the several centuries previous. Maybe a hundred thousand people all told. Still, the number is gutting and Din feels a numb flush prickle across his skin. 

“Until the moment I saw you, I never even thought about who may have survived.” He feels a stab of shame. “When Davarax took me back to the Covert, I was a mess. Every loud noise, every mechanical sound...nighttime was awful. I suppose it seems selfish now, but I was so frightened and alone that I couldn’t even fathom that anyone I’d known was still alive.” 

Din’s hand is resting on the wooden counter and Sasena gently lays her own on top of his. 

“You were a traumatized child, Din. That’s not selfishness, that’s self-preservation.”

“You looked for me,” he counters. 

“Din, I had my parents and Granna.” 

Din cannot deny her logic there. He takes a deep breath before what he says next. “I buried this, all of this, for so long. I can’t tell you how many years I’ve spent telling myself I’d grieved for my parents and moved on when really I’d just locked my grief away so it couldn’t…” He trails off. 

“Hurt you?” she tries. 

“Yeah.” He wishes he could take the helmet off. His eyes are burning and he wants desperately to wipe at them to remove the evidence of how this affects him. 

“Still did though, didn’t it?” she presses. 

“Yeah.” 

“I did the same with you for a long time. I meant it when I said you were like a brother. And I was angry that you were the one member of my immediate family who didn’t make it. I think I was angry with you for that for a long time.” Her smile is strained and sad. 

Din huffs a laugh. “I was angry at everyone and everything. To the point that I was fairly certain it would destroy me for a while. Paz, and then later Corin and the kid— they saved me, I think. They’re the reason I worked up enough nerve to come back and actually see you.” 

She nods. “I’m happy you did.” 

“I wasn’t going to. The whole pushing away the hurt and all.” 

“Well, I’m glad you changed your mind. And I hope maybe this helps you stop pushing your past away.” She’s looks thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t think we ever really move on from loss, Din. We just learn to cope. I still miss the family, the cousins and aunts and uncles, I lost and my home on Aq Vetina every day. And I still have nightmares about—” She gestures to her face “—the bomb that caused this and the attack and the years we spent trying to survive in the camp, but the memories and the nightmares don’t paralyse me for hours like they used to.” 

Din just stares at her through his t-visor as she finishes, realizing that it may have been almost three decades, but that she still understands him in the same, almost instinctual way that she always did. He wants very much to hug her, to use words to tell her how much he missed her all these years, but isn’t sure he could handle either of those without a full breakdown at the moment. 

Finally, he settles for a squeeze of the hand she’d placed on his and asks, “Are you in touch with any other survivors?” 

“A few. Like I said before, we’re pretty scattered. The Separatists took over Aq Vetina to use as a base for military operations, and then the Empire after that. So none of us ever returned. And no one I knew personally before the massacre. Just survivors I’ve connected with on the holonet.”

After that, they lapse into silence, watching Grogu explore the shop. He seems to find the same magic in the displays of clothing that he and Sasena used to. He ducks into and out of the fabrics, delighting in their swishing textures and bright colours, until finally a red brocaded shirt falls on him and he has to flail his way out from under it. Din almost goes to get him, worried that he’ll damage it, but Sasena stops him with a hand on his arm, laughing as a large green ear pokes out of the neck of the garment. 

“Red looks good on him, I think.” She pauses, and Din recognizes the expression on her face as one he often sees on Corin. She wants to say something but fears it may be an overstep. “Can I—Would you—” She gives up and instead holds up a finger and retreats into the store room behind the counter. 

She returns with a small, child-sized robe. “Din, I know maybe this is a reminder you won’t yet want, but maybe you’d like this for him. And I have others you can take with you, too. Like the ones we wore as children.” She sets the robe down on the counter, allowing him to decide whether or not to take it. 

Din picks it up, holds the small garment in his hands, overcome. Then an impulse hits him and he moves swiftly, knowing he either does this now, before he loses his nerve, or not at all. He scoops up Grogu and set him on the wooden counter. Instead of the normal fuss his son usually puts up when being dressed in the morning, Grogu burbles happily as Din tugs his simple wool robe over his head and replaces it with the Aq Vetinian one. The sight squeezes his heart. 

“Thank you,” he says, his voice thick, “Thank you, Sasena.” 

“I’ve more if you want them,” she offers softly. “And I could fix this up, too.” She reaches around him to gently lift up part of his cloak. “I could sew some rubruma-dyed wool into it as well.”

Again, he acts before his desire to flee, to bury, to push away can kick in. “That’s...very kind of you.” 

“There’s no pressure, Din. You won’t offend me if you say no.” 

“No, no.” He shakes his head. “I think I’d like that.” 

The joy in her smile floods her face, twinkling into the pale green of her eyes. As she gathers her sewing supplies, questions come to his mind. “How do you make the dye? Do you grow rubruma here?” He’d never seen it anywhere else but his homeworld. 

Again, happiness radiates from her. “We do,” she says, her face lighting with an idea. “Come with me.” 

She leads them, cloth and sewing supplies in hand, up the first flights of stairs that connect the tall building that houses her shop and her family’s apartment. Then, they go up a level further, emerging onto a rooftop garden. There are simple, duracrete benches and a couple of small, rough-hewn wooden tables scattered amongst raised beds of plants. Vines of flowers on trellises and rows of edible vegetables fill most of the space, but all around it runs planters of a richly golden grain. The blades of it undulate slowly in the breeze, top heavy and bent over a bit by the scarlet seeds that top it. 

“My father grabbed a package of seeds he had as we fled the house,” she explains. “He hung onto them until we moved here and then we planted them. After time we harvested enough seeds to plant more. The farm Willa helps manage allows her a small plot to grow them and we grow some here, too.” 

Din reaches out to touch it, almost laughing. “I didn’t—”

“Think you’d ever see it again?” she finishes. “I know. I’ve heard that before. I’ve sent some seeds to other Aq Vetinians as well. It was never cultivated anywhere beyond its home planet, so it was sheer luck that my father both had seeds and the wits about him to grab them.” Her face falls a little. “I think he knew we wouldn’t be able to get back.” 

They sit and Din detaches his cape so Sasena can start sewing. Grogu happily explores the garden, more enamoured with the insects than with the plants. He eats a couple and Din has to suppress a laugh. 

“You don’t have poisonous insects here, do you?” he asks, recalling his and Corin’s teasing conversation from the other day. 

“What? No. Why?” She looks up, perplexed and Din points to his son, half a butterfly hanging out of his mouth. 

Shock and then laughter alights across Sasena’s face. “He’s—he’s a unique child, isn’t he?” 

Din snorts. “That’s one way of putting it.”

The mood light, they chat again as she works until a particular memory of his parents—of the time they’d taken him and Sasena to the ocean in the summer, a special trip considering its distance from their settlement—catches in his throat. 

“Sorry,” he says, “Sometimes it’s the weirdest things.” 

“The happiest memories are the hardest, yes?”

Din huffs a watery sigh of agreement. 

“Din?” He can hear the tentative question in her voice and instinctively braces himself, though he’s unsure for what. 

“Are you still planning on leaving tomorrow morning?” 

“I—Yes. This has been...wonderful. But we need to get back.” 

“You’re welcome to stay. And to come back again, whenever you like,” she says. Din nods, but can tell she’s not finished. “But I think maybe the time we’ve found each other is...more than a coincidence.” 

Din stomach sinks, though her words are said gently. 

She continues. “There is a festival that starts here tomorrow, on Acaron-9. The Festival of Ancestors. We observe it every harvest. It starts with the Ignis Nox, tomorrow evening. It’s a ceremony to honour the dead. We make bundles out of cloth and fill them with objects that we want to send to the dead to honour them. We burn them on bonfires and then there is feasting and singing and dancing. Everyone is welcome and the belief is that the smoke from what we burn reaches the heavens, the stars, where the souls of those we loved have returned to the stardust that created us all. It’s simple, but Din, it’s beautiful and maybe…” She sets down her sewing and walks to sit beside him on the bench, looking into the t-visor as if it weren’t there, as if she can see the brown eyes of the small boy who was a brother to her all those years ago. “Maybe it will help you start to really heal.” 

Din is quiet, but his heart races, and this time he cannot fight the urge to run from this all. He loved his parents, but he’s not ready for… There had been no funeral, no formal acknowledgement of their loss, and he’d told himself he never wanted that anyway. Didn’t need it. _Doesn’t need it_ , he thinks, shutting the thought. 

“Thank you, Sasena,” he says, and he means it, he does. “But I don’t think….”

She nods, her eyes sympathetic. “I understand, Din.” 

They return to safer topics, talking about their children as Sasena mends the holes in his cloak and sews a beautiful, hidden strip of deep red wool inside the inner cowl. He’s grateful she doesn’t press the issue, but a small, sad part of him wishes she had. 

• • •

Din tosses and turns that night. He’d been firm with his decision to leave before the festival. Sasena had understood, been respectful of his decision to leave the next day before it began. But the decision is festering in him like a splinter. He feigns sleep at first, wanting to let Corin and Grogu get some rest, but eventually he falls into a fitful doze. 

Unlike the previous sleep cycle, night folds him harshly into her claws and suddenly he’s in the small cellar on Aq Vetina, hearing the dying screams of his parents repeat again and again as his red tunic turns to blood. He looks down and finds not a child’s body but his current form. He tries, desperately, to stop listening, to forget. Frantically, he scrapes his hands over his skin, trying to slough off the blood, remove the clothes. Forget. He prays the word like a chant in the dark of the small cubby. He cannot mourn, cannot be afraid of what he cannot remember. But the more he wants to forget, the louder the screams become, the more aggressive the whirs and clicks and gunfire of the droids. Smoke begins to flood the compartment and he starts to shout, frightened and enraged. 

He has no idea how much time has passed when Corin shakes him awake, but it takes him a good while to fully escape the world of his nightmare. He’s in his underarmour, safe in Sasena’s small guest room, but he has to keep touching his hands to reassure himself there’s no blood on them, has to bury his face in the crook of Corin’s neck and breath in his familiar scent to banish the smell of smoke and death. Grogu has woken as well, cooing mournfully as he climbs onto Din and snuggles close. 

Corin holds him, saying nothing, until finally Din finds his voice. “Did I yell?” he asks. He thinks of Rioa and Ell in the next room, heart sinking at the thought of frightening them, of disrupting the peace of their lives. 

“No, _kar’ta_. I don’t think anyone heard you. I woke from you tossing and got you to wake just as you started to shout.” 

Din exhales, relieved. “Okay, good. Good. Thank you.” 

They’re silent for a while, Corin rubbing little circles at the base of Din’s skull with his fingertips. Then, as has become their habit on nights like these, Corin asks, “Want to talk about it?” 

Din almost says no. Almost. But at the moment he is about to, Grogu reaches his little hand up and touches Din’s face. The same warmth and calm he’d felt in the alley two days previous floods through him again and something clicks into place, the shape of Din’s dreams taking on a clarity that he can’t deny. 

“I think I’ve been running for too long,” he sighs. He tells Corin about tomorrow evening’s festival, of why he doesn’t want to stay and why he, maybe, does. 

When he’s finished, he asks Corin what he thinks. What he would do. Corin sits for a long time, deliberating carefully before he speaks. 

“I ran from my past for years before we returned to Seswenna and it always kept pace with me. I never outran it and the more I tried the more it hurt me. Because the parts that keep up with you? It’s not the good ones.” He pauses again for a long while, working through what he wants to say next. “Look, Din, you know I will support you either way. And I get each decision, I really do. But our time on Seswenna? It helped me gain the clarity I needed about the abuse, the violence of my childhood. It helped me heal those wounds into scars I could live with. And it gave me the closure I needed to cherish the parts that I wanted to treasure but kept running from along with the bad. My mother. Neleem. The good parts. I—”

He pauses again, and Din knows him well enough to recognize the tell. The faint tensing that indicates his habitual fear that he’s overstepped. Din squeezes his shoulder reassuringly. “Keep going. I want to hear your thoughts, Corin.” 

“Well—well, I think that if there’s any good in your childhood, and I know there is, know there was because, I mean, just look at Sasena, then I think you might...might owe it to yourself to explore that. Whether it’s now or later is for you to decide, but I think the pain of it is the pain of a healing wound rather than an open one, if that makes sense.”

It does. It makes a lot of sense. His gut, his base instinct to flee, doesn’t want it to, but it does. 

“I think we need to stay,” he says, finally, pulling Corin and the kid close and breathing through the panic that rises in him at the declaration. 

• • •

The settlement is quiet the next day. Everything is closed to allow families to prepare for the evening’s ceremonies. Willa makes a simple breakfast of porridge for them all, and then the preparations begin. The children are happy, but more solemn than they’d been the day before, just old enough to understand the importance of the day and the reasons the adults around them are more solemn than usual. Grogu picks up on it as well, and glues himself to Din in a childlike offering of comfort. 

They gather in the common room to begin work on the bundles. Sasena and Willa’s daughter, Rioa, lights a bowl of incense and Sasena explains that it is made of local herbs and designed to focus their hearts as they prepare to honour their ancestors. Willa brings out a bolt of a rough, brown cloth and Ell helps her cut it into small squares to pass out. When they finish, Willa offers a simple prayer asking for the comfort of good memories as they work. Then the gathering splits, each person finding a quieter spot to reflect while they create the bundles that they will burn to send their love and their grief to the stars. 

At Willa’s suggestion, Din, Corin and Paz all make their way up to the rooftop garden, where Willa insists the fresh air will help them as they reflect. “It is always the hardest the first time,’ she says, and Din is again touched by the warmth and kindness with which she shares this aspect of her and Sasena’s community with them. And the sunshine and cool air of the autumn day does help, but Din still feels like a bit of an intruder in it all until Sasena joins him, Corin and Paz on the roof with a gift. 

“I brought you something,” she says, smiling faintly as she settles next to Din. She presses a simple wooden box into his hands. “It’s rubruma grains from this year’s harvest. I thought maybe you could take them with you to have at your home, at the Covert. To remember. And you might include some of them in this.” She gestures to the empty cloth laid out before Din and Corin. They’d decided to complete theirs together, neither feeling like they had much to put in. “Here on Acaron, we set aside meaningful items for our bundles all year. You didn’t have that opportunity.”

Din accepts the box, moved. “Thank you.” It’s a poor offering in return, but it’s all he has. 

“I have a few other things, too.” She sets down paper and writing tools alongside some strips of unmistakable red cloth. “Willa suggested that since you might not have anything physical to include in the bundle, you could write some messages to send up to those you are honouring. It’s not a usual practice here, but it might work in your situation.” 

Din is too overcome to say anything, but Corin and Paz take over, thanking Sasena and Willa for their thoughtfulness. Before she leaves, Sasena lays her hand on the side of Din’s helmet, and he can’t help it at that point. He pulls her close, into a hug, and just holds her for a long time. 

In the end, he includes six rubruma seeds in the bundle for each of his parents, as a way to honour both them and the six tenets of _Resol’nare_. He scribes the Mandalorian remembrance of the dead on a piece of paper, which he rolls and ties closed with a strip of the Aq Vetinian fabric that he cuts with the vibroblade Davarax gave him when he swore the Creed. In everything he does, he tries to weave together both of his histories, wanting to honour that both have led him to the man he’s become. The father and husband and warrior he is today. It’s painful, but it’s also a release: the tenderness of a healing wound, as Corin had put it last night, rather than the rot of festering one. 

Corin writes a message to his mother and snips off a lock of his hair to include, explaining that lockets of hair are an old custom on Seswenna and that he’s fairly certain his mother had been buried with such a pendant. He’d shared a quiet, painful memory of wanting to cut a lock of her hair before she was buried and being prevented from doing so by Macero, who’d scolded him for the sentimentality of such a “frivolous desire.” Din holds Corin close after that, pushing back his quiet rage to offer the comfort his husband needs. 

Paz is reticent about what he includes, but Din notices him chip off a few pieces of paint from his yellow armour and place them on the cloth. It is a colour of remembrance in Mandalorian culture and Din has a feeling it’s being sent as a message to the many _vode_ the Vizsla clan has lost in generations of battle. 

By the time they walk to the bonfires being built at the edge of town in the now mostly harvested fields, Din feels ragged but also peaceful. When they place their bundles on the flames and watch them burn, he tries to do as Willa instructs. Raising his head to the vast expanse of the night sky above them, he wills his messages for those he’s lost to reach them where they are now, returned to the stardust of the galaxy. 

At first, though, as Din watches the smoke of the fire curl into the starry sky, he clenches his jaw, denies himself, out of habit, the tears that distort the stars above into dull, watery streaks. But then he hears Sasena behind him, accepts her hand as she slips it into his gloved one and the tears spill, the stars above him becoming vibrant and clear once more. 

In the distance, drums and music and shouts of celebration begin to float through the air and though he hurts, a similar, piercing joy floods Din’s own soul. He hangs onto Sasena’s quietly offered hand and pulls Corin and the kid close as he whispers the words taught to him long ago by the Armorer: “ _Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc. Ni partayli, gar darasuum._ ” Then, for the first time since childhood, he says their names out loud, offering them to the stars. 

“Eyana Djarin, Adiv Djarin. _Ner buire_.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRANSLATION NOTES**
> 
> _Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc. Ni partayli, gar darasuum._  
>  I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal. 
> 
> _Ner buire._  
>  My parents. 
> 
> **Thank you for reading.💕**


	4. Gar Darasuum - So You Are Eternal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last installment. **Thank you to everyone who’s been following this!** Please see the end notes for a sappy note from yours truly, translation notes, and a note re: an **update to the warnings on this fic**. After some hemming and hawing, I have shifted from “No Archives Warning Apply” to “Author Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings,” just to be safe. This is in regards to the end of the fic, which is still very much focused on the themes of healing/honouring one’s past, and is similar in tone to the rest of the fic, but may touch on an Archive warning. If you want more information before reading, please check the end notes. I may be overthinking this, but figure an end notes warning will allow folks to choose whether or not they want more detail, as this warning does spoil the end a bit but informed consent/content warnings are important! 💕

The Covert’s night cycle is about halfway through when Din wakes. He’d been dreaming, but his waking doesn’t feel abrupt, isn’t the violent snap into consciousness that ends a nightmare. Instead, it’s as if he’s followed a stream from its source, each dream a tributary that swells the once narrow waters into a winding, meandering river. It flows him out into an expanding ocean of consciousness. 

He drifts there in the waters between illusion and reality for a time, and it makes his dreams feel both profoundly comforting and difficult to immediately parse from his actual memories. Each had flowed into the next for most of the night, melting into another like snowflakes falling on water. In one, he’d been a child again, standing next to a field of grain with Sasena, her long hair fluttering in the summer breeze. Then Davarax had approached from somewhere to stand with them, sun shining on the blue of his armour. He’d taken both of their small hands and led them down a dirt path between rows of rubruma, its golden stalks topped with dark red seeds. As they’d walked, the field had dissolved, swirling away into the pale walls of the Covert on Ortussa, and the dream shifted once more. In his arms he’d held Grogu, sleepy and content, as Din’s father led them both to the room where Din would swear his Creed before the Armorer. When he arrived, it was, instead, his mother to whom he offered the tenets of the _Resol’nare_ and Corin who’d placed the helmet over his face. When he’d bowed his head and opened his eyes to look through his visor for the first time, he’d peered into his cupped hands to find in them a rough woolen cloth with rubruma grains laid across it, ready to be bundled. He’d tied it securely, then set the bundle down and picked up a second helmet, passing it to Corin, who’d lovingly covered Din's hands with his own as he accepted it. 

Din smiles, the warmth of his dreams saturating him. Though jumbled, they are rooted in memories of his past, and he is relieved to find he no longer feels compelled to push them away. 

Beside him, Corin breathes evenly, sound asleep. Grogu is sprawled out on Corin’s chest, also out like a light. Din’s glad for that. In a few hours, when morning breaks, Corin will swear the Creed. Anxiety had kept Corin up later than usual, and the _ad’ika_ had picked up on it all, refusing to settle and getting into all sorts of antics in what Din suspects were attempts to distract his fretful _buir_. After multiple practices of the words Corin would recite to commit himself to the _Resol’nare_ , extra bedtime snacks for the kid, and a few softly sung lullabies, the three of them had finally drifted off to sleep. 

Din watches his husband. His rest had proved lasting and is deep and untroubled tonight despite the time it took to get there. Corin had first asked Din about swearing the Creed several months prior and while Din had made it clear that he would never, ever expect that from Corin, his _riduur_ had made it equally clear that he’d asked because it was what _he_ wanted, where _he_ knew he belonged. But, though Corin trusts himself more now than he ever did in the past, he’d still been plagued by self-doubt in his preparations to become a full _Mando’ad_ , fearful that he wasn’t truly worthy. 

Honestly, Din can’t think of anyone _more_ worthy of the Creed. Corin is loyal and honourable. His fierceness is tempered with compassion, his lethalness by integrity. Despite his skill as a fighter, he retains a humility, an openness to learning, that has made him a truly formidable warrior. Din loves him, more than he ever thought possible. Loves him whether or not he swears the Creed. But he cannot deny that Corin’s _Mandokarla_ and his desire to become _Mando’ad_ stirs something primal within him. An old, solemn joy that runs deeper than his own consciousness. 

Din’s not entirely sure he could explain what compels him to pull out the small box of red rubruma grains he’s kept tucked under the bed since he returned from Acaron-9 several months previous, but his ancestors, both _Mando’ade_ and Aq Vetinian feel close, the veil between past and present thin. 

He rolls a few of the grains in his palm. Almost without thinking, he decides to slip them into one of the pouches on his belt, wanting them with him for today’s ceremony. Today is about the future, about Corin’s future and their future together. But if his reconnection with Sasena and his experiences on Acaron-9 have helped him realize one thing, it’s that this future is possible in part because of his past and he wants that with him today when Corin swears the Creed. 

He wonders, not for the first time, what his parents would think of Corin. What would they think of Din’s Mandalorian soul and Mandalorian family? He’s not sure they would fully understand his Creed, but they did understand love. They loved Din, gave their lives to protect him in a way that feels deeply Mandalorian to him, and they would love Corin and Grogu. They would be proud, he thinks. Are proud, wherever they are, their souls in the dust of the stars. And they’ll be there, in some sense, with the rest of his _aliit_ tomorrow. As will Corin’s mother, who Din knows only through his _riduur_ ’s memories, but who he’s sensed had a spirit made of the same essential goodness as Corin’s. 

Din runs a hand lightly over his face as a peaceful sadness falls over him. There is loss but there is also the endless cycle of life, of change and growth and renewal. Din glances at the chronometer, time steadily pouring forward as it always has. A few hours remain before morning. Stretching back out on the bed, Din nestles against Corin. A rightness hums through him as he falls back asleep. It is a deep, instinctual knowing that he cannot explain, but it floods him with the sense that he is firmly on the path he was meant to tread. 

• • •

The ceremony is simple but beautiful, deeply imbued with tradition and meaning. It is the same one Din undertook when he turned thirteen, the same taken by all _Mando’ade_ when they choose the Creed. It is the ritual that sits at the core of who they are, what connects them together as a people. 

Those closest to them in the Covert ring the room in a circle. Corin kneels before the Armorer, humble and brave, and repeats the words that have passed from one generation of _Mando’ade_ to the next for thousands and thousands of years:

 _“Ba'jur bal beskar'gam,  
_ _Ara'nov, aliit,  
Mando'a bal Mand'alor—  
_ _An vencuyan mhi._

 _Ner kar’ta Manda. Ner runi Manda.  
_ _Ni cuy Mando’ad.  
_ _Ni ven’oyacyi de Resol’nare par darasuum.  
_ _Haat, ijaa, haa'it.”_

His voice had started laced with a tremor but ends sure and strong. Din and the other Mandalorians who ring the room repeat the words that seal the Creed: _Haat, ijaa, haa'it_. Truth, honour, vision. Raga and Paz step forward, each offering a weapon: a blaster from Raga and a vibroblade from Paz. Corin accepts the gifts with a _kov’nyn_ from each of them. Grogu toddles forward, helped by Barthor, and offers a mythosaur pendant before climbing into his _buir_ ’s lap to also offer a _kov’nyn_ before Barthor lifts him up and steps back into the circle. The sense of connection from earlier permeates Din in that moment. He touches the pouch of rubruma on his belt. Ancestors, _Mando’ade_ , foundlings. Past, present, future. Each one becoming the next in an eternal cycle. 

Then, the Armorer hands Din the helmet with a solemn nod and he moves to kneel before his _riduur._ Corin has closed his eyes. His mouth is softly open and his hands rest in his lap, palms up. The familiar, beloved face before Din is calm and peaceful, chin lifted in a way that communicates both the pride Corin feels in this moment and the humility with which he has opened himself to the teachings of the _Resol’nare_. It is clear to Din that Corin is ready and the emotions that thicken in his throat almost keep him from saying what he needs to say next. His lips tremble around the words, his heart soaring. 

_“Gar kar’ta Manda. Mhi kir’mani gar._ _  
__Gar runi jii Manda. Ke kotep. K’ijaatyc._  
_Ibic buy'ce cabuor gar runi’Manda._ _  
Aranar bic ti gar oyar.”_

He taps his forehead to the helmet in a _kov’nyn_ , remembering the way Davarax had done the same when Din had sworn the Creed decades previous. Then, in a moment that sears itself forever onto his heart, Din lowers the helmet onto Corin’s head and finishes the oath that will make the commitment complete:

_“Mhi kar'tayli gai sa'vod, Corin Djarin. Haat, ijaa, haa'it. Vode an.”_

• • •

About a month later, during gear repairs and weapon maintenance, Corin asks about painting his armour. Din explains the significance of the paint, the meanings for which many _Mando’ade_ choose their armour colours. Black for justice, gold for vengeance, yellow for remembrance and teal for healing. Orange declares a lust for life, and green a sense of duty. While not entirely conscious of it, he avoids red, the colour he’s lingered over in the Armoury’s stores more times than he’d care to admit. 

Corin listens, pensive, and then asks, “Why have you never painted yours?” 

Din sits with the urge to flee the conversation until it passes, and Corin seems to sense this, respecting the long silence. 

“Because the colour I’d paint it is...painful,” he says finally. 

Setting aside the blaster he’s cleaning, Corin scoots over next to him, taking his hand. He doesn’t appear to expect an answer, is content just to sit with Din and offer some comfort. But Din has been trying not to run from these feelings anymore. Sitting with his grief is difficult, but has freed him, too. 

“Red,” he says, voice small. “I’d paint it red.” 

Grogu looks up from where he is playing with his toys, his favourite wooden frog clutched in his hands. Din suspects he senses the importance of the moment and this is confirmed when he toddles to his other side and climbs into his lap. Smiling softly, Din feels that, surrounded by the love of his _aliit_ , he can say what is on his heart. 

“Red is the colour for honouring one’s parents. It would...to me it would symbolize the three people who raised me. Eyana, Adiv and Davarax. I don’t want to paint all my armour, but I would like to…” He trails off, lifting his hand off Grogu’s head and touching his right pauldron. “I’d paint this one. The one with our family signet. When the time feels right.” _Not if the time feels right_ , he thinks, this time. _When_. 

Corin leans his head on Din’s shoulder, the contact between them warm and simple. “Thank you for telling me,” he says. And then he lifts his head and tilts Din’s face toward him for a kiss. 

When it ends, they talk about the colours Corin wants to paint his armour. He settles on teal for healing and accents of orange as a way of signifying his commitment to his life with his _aliit_ and as a Mandalorian. Together, they would capture the healing and renewal that his sense of belonging with Din and Grogu, and with the Covert, have brought him. 

• • •

Three days later, they sit together on a drop sheet in the centre of their small quarters at the Covert. It’s an old, heavy cloth lent to them by the Armourer and swathes of its brown canvas are abstract with a variety of colours left behind by others. Din’s hand lingers over the remnants of red paint in particular. They’d only collected the colours for Corin’s armour, but Din feels like soon he might be ready to paint his own pauldron. The look of the red paint, even on the old canvas cloth, seems to strengthen this. It’s a colour that has to come back to him again and again in his life: the red clothing and rubruma of his childhood, a symbol of peace and belonging and the simple prosperity of his birth people; then the red-hot brand of his adolescent anger, the crimson shame of blood spilled with less than honourable intent; and finally, the significance of the colour to the _Mando’ade_ , a warrior’s marking to honour those who raised them to live with honour and integrity. It is a colour of both birth and death, a colour of life circling forward into eternity. 

Din is pulled from his thoughts by Corin, who is fidgeting nervously. He’s laid everything out and is ready, the tools and paint lined up neatly and his armour cleaned and spread out on the drop sheet. But he’s hesitating to begin and Din’s not sure why. 

“Everything okay, _kar’ta_?” Din asks. 

Grogu is sitting not far from the drop cloth, levitating a small rock as practice. Corin darts his gaze to his son, who is getting more and more skilled every day and doesn’t need to break his control on the rock to turn his head and meet his _buir_ ’s gaze. Din watches the unspoken sentiments that seem to pass between them. Grogu’s face is as soft and childlike as ever, but his big eyes seem knowing, seem to hold reassurance and say, “Go on.” 

Bolstered, Corin speaks. “We, uh, we got you something. Made you something. You might want it for what we are doing today.” Corin gestures to the paint and the armour. “But please don’t feel like you have to use it yet if it doesn’t feel right. Everything in it’s own time, _cyare_.” 

And then he gets up and pulls open the drawer where he keeps his clothes. Extracting a small, metal canister, he returns to sit next to Din. He presses it into Din’s palm. 

“Open it.” 

Din does. It’s paint. Red paint. But it’s a dark, deep red. Rich and earthy. 

“It’s—” Corin stammers a little, struggling for the right words. “It’s not just regular red paint. The Armorer made it for us. With rubruma grains. Sasena gave me some too and I tucked them away. When you taught me the meaning of the armour colours, I—” 

Din raises a hand to Corin’s face and searches his eyes. There is so much he wants to say but all the words feel clumsy on his tongue. He tips his forehead to Corin’s, hoping the touch will say what he cannot. 

Rubbing a thumb on the cool metal of the canister, Din can’t hold back the tears that sting his eyes. It’s a small, simple vessel but it holds so much. It holds hurt and healing and past and future. It holds family. It holds love. 

“Thank you,” he manages, finally, brokenly. “Thank you, _ner kar’ta_.” 

When he pulls back, he wipes his eyes and kisses his _riduur_ , sad and soft. Then, with trembling hands, Din detaches his right pauldron and, wordlessly, they begin to work. 

It’s time. 

• • •

**Many Years Later**

The sun is nearly set as Grogu sets his small ship down on a grassy hill not far from the flickering lights of a settlement. The small points of light and life are dull in the glow of early twilight but will soon shine as brightly as the stars emerging overhead. Grogu sits a moment in the cockpit, his gaze settling on the fires that have been lit around the outskirts of the town, in the harvested fields. It’s been a few years since he’s been here, but it looks the same as always and the planet has the same familiar presence in the Force: comforting and serene.

The feel of the people in the fields below is also a similar, familiar solace. Reverberating deeply with both their sadness and their joy, the Force carries their emotions to Grogu, floods him with the same tender mix of grief and celebration. He regrets that it has been longer than usual since his last visit to Acaron-9, but he’s glad he’s here now. Coming here has been a ritual in his life even as the years since his _buire_ ’s passing have melted from decades into over a century. He’d missed it and is grateful to be back. 

He doubts he’ll need it, but Grogu tucks his lightsaber into his belt out of sheer habit as he rises to gather the supplies he’ll need to build the bonfire for the Ignis Nox. The saber is a comfort as much as a weapon, and on a night in which the worlds of the living and the dead are so close, it feels right to have it with him. It connects him to another line of his ancestors, is a tangible intimation that the broken circle of the Jedi has become whole once more. Gently shouldering the rucksack that holds the rest of what he needs, Grogu opens the door of his ship and descends down the ramp. 

Once the fire is built, he sits in its warmth and removes the contents of the rucksack with reverent hands. First, he removes the two cloth-wrapped pauldrons he keeps with him. He unwinds their protective wrapping and sits them both before him. One is a deep red. The paint is chipped in areas showing the silver beneath, and the embossed mudhorn is rough beneath his fingers. The other is a muted blue-green with a vibrant stripe of orange running down the centre. It too is scuffed and chipped from a lifetime of wear, but the memories that flow through him as he touches the pauldrons are vivid. They are times of laughter and joy, of sadness and fear, of learning and failing and trying again. They are the scent of pine, the smooth wood of a well-loved toy, the melody of a familiar lullaby. At their core, these memories are one, unchanging thing: love. 

Grogu smiles. His _buire_ were good men. They lived long, good lives—fought bravely, protected their _aliit_ fiercely, and loved each other and their son unconditionally. Though they are long gone, Grogu can sense them not only within the general, comforting thrum of the Force, but deep within him too. They are as much a part of him as his years of Jedi training, and when he takes his first padawan in the coming years, the essence of who they were, Grogu hopes, will continue on in Grogu’s own actions. 

The deep ache of their absence flares in Grogu as he removes a simple cloth bundle from his rucksack. He’d prepared it earlier in the day, during his flight. It’s not much, but everything in it has a meaning. Undoing the tie of red fabric that holds the bundle together, Grogu ghosts a hand over each item. When reached out to with the Force, the items are far greater than material objects. To touch them that way is to see their meaning echo back not only into his own past, but into the pasts of those they honour. 

He lingers his touch and his mind over two items in particular. First are the red grains of rubruma. The memories and sensations that weave out from them are tangled and complex. Grogu’s eyes fall closed as he sits with them, opening his mind and letting them flow through him. People he does not know work soil he has never touched. There is the broad echo of hope and new beginnings and then the grief of those being cut short. Overlaying this are familiar faces, both from his own mind and the mind of his _buir._ Gentle faces with eyes soft with love. There is also pain, hardening like the husk that protects the fragile seed of life inside the grain. A dry, dormant ache. But then there are tears that are wept like rain. Tears that nourish the seeds that hold the promise of new life. He remembers the gentle shift of his _buir_ ’s presence in the living Force after he’d led him to Sasena, remembers sensing, even as a child, the growth and healing that took root where there was once only bitterness and anger.

Next, his fingers alight on the locket he’d found many months ago in a bazaar. Though dull and nearly discarded when he found it, the locket had called to him as he’d picked up supplies to replenish his ship’s stores. Inlaid with a delicate pattern of leaves and stars, the tarnished locket is of Seswennian design, and the moment he’d first touched it, he’d been struck with an image of a willowy, flaxen-haired woman clipping a lock of her son’s dark hair as he’d slept and placing it in a similar vessel. In the Force, she’d felt like a fragile, fine-boned bird in a gilded cage, but her love for the boy—for the being that Grogu immediately recognized as his father—had been a sort of freedom for her. And a similar, selfless love had set his _buire_ free. Both of them. Their love for Grogu and their love for each other. Shortly after he’d gotten it, Grogu had cut a lock of his own coarse brown hair and placed it in the locket. A reminder to his fathers that he, too, loved them and still loves them yet with the same gentle fierceness. When he touches it now, that love sits in his chest like a sun, as a life-giving, tangible warmth. 

By the time Grogu recedes out of his meditation, the sun has set and the stars shine brilliantly in the cradle of the sky. Grogu exhales a soft breath, sitting with his grief. It’s been many years, but Grogu misses them no less. 

When he’s ready, he looks up into the night sky, to the fabric of the universe where his fathers and the many others he has loved are now eternal, returned to the immutable flow of the Force. The words that he murmurs are ancient, infinite themselves as they pass from one generation to the next: “ _I’m still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal_.”

Using the Force, Grogu lifts the small cloth bundle onto the flames, his heart heavy yet peaceful as the smoke curls upwards to the stars. He speaks their names like a prayer. “Din Djarin. Corin Djarin. _Ner buire_.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning Update** : Shifted to “Author Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings” because there is technically Major Character Death in this, but it appears off-screen and at the end of the characters’ natural life spans (essentially, there is a timeskip and it involves the natural movement of one generation to the next). 
> 
> \--
> 
> **TRANSLATION NOTES**
> 
> _**Words spoken by Corin during the Resol'nare ceremony:** _  
> Education and armor,  
> Self-defense, our tribe,  
> Our language and our leader—  
> All help us survive.
> 
> My heart is Mandalorian. My soul is Mandalorian.  
> I am a child of Mandalore.  
> I will live by the Creed eternally.  
> Truth, honour, vision.
> 
>  _ **Words spoken by Din during the Resol'nare ceremony:**_  
>  Your heart [is] Mandalorian. We adopt you.  
> Your soul is Mandalorian now. Be brave. Be honourable.  
> This helmet protects your Mandalorian soul.  
> Guard it with your life. 
> 
> We know your name as our comrade, Corin Djarin. Truth, honour, vision. Comrades all. 
> 
> \--
> 
>  **Author's End Note**  
>  So, I just want to take a second and say thanks to all of the lovely Mandorin ‘verse folks who read this, left kudos, and sent kind and lovely feedback my way as I wrote this. Writing fan fiction is something that brings me a lot of joy, but that I disconnected from for a long time in life, opting just to read instead. But the incredible ‘verse LadyIrina created made it impossible for me _not_ to write—there is just something about her characters that compels you to weave stories about them! Anyway, this fic in particular took a lot of nerve for me to write. One shots are one thing, but multi-chaptered fics, even when they’re only four chapters long, are still very daunting to me. (I have one other, but it’s basically just a one shot that got too long for its own good, hah). This fic was one that I conceived of and planned out as four distinct parts, each connecting to a part of the Mandalorian remembrance of the dead. I had a lot of ideas I wanted to convey in this, some of which were important to me not only as a fan but personally, too, and that scared the crap outta me. I doubted myself a lot, wanted to abandon this a lot, but the kind feedback and comments that many of you left helped me believe in myself enough to execute this. This probably sounds weird and sappy, but I am really grateful for that because writing this was healing for me in a lot of ways. While I am lucky to have both of my parents still in my life, I have lost loved ones and grappled with trauma, and the theme of healing in this mattered to me a lot. So thank you for reading and thank you to LadyIrina for Mandorin! I hope this fic brought you enjoyment. 💙🧡


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